Pardon me if I’m a ….
Pardon me if I’m a bit confused this week. I drove by the school and was surprised to see all the cars in the parking lot. Then I realized it was Sept. 1, and according to state law passed a few years ago, this was the date school could officially open. But the Labor Day is still a week away. I guess it has something to do with the calendar and this year Labor Day is as late in September as it can get. As I drove by today I saw the Amish School out on Willard Road, west of town, was also open.
Then this afternoon something told me it was time to take the seasonal weekly tour, but the next day for the TRG isn’t until the ninth. Then I remembered the early copy deadline for Friday and thought, I’d better get at it.
There are farmers still cutting hay and a couple have even chopped some corn. Maybe they are just trying their choppers out. Here and there a few fields of soybeans are starting to turn color, which says our season is changing. One thing I found along the roadside is golden rod. I decided to look them up and see where they came from. No place. They are considered native to North America. Once more there are from 100 to 120 different varieties and they generally are found in prairies or along the roadsides.
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Now that I know that, on to the next wild plant - wild rice. I’m not sure why Mark put something on Facebook the other day about wild rice. It reminded me of my grade school days. At one point our country school was in danger of losing its ability to remain a two-room school. So arrangements were made to have the Native Americans from the Round Lake Reservation come to our school. At the time it seemed like they were coming a long way, but it was actually four miles as the crow flies. Of course, there was the matter of getting here from there, which made it seem longer. Today there is something called the Rice Bed Creek Wildlife Area, but back then it was just the Rice Beds and not good for much of anything.
Well yes, there was. Something called the Big Round Lake Indian Reservation. I’ve mentioned before about it being such a bad area and indeed it was. Nothing but woods and swamps. Just the place for Native Americans, our forefathers thought. The Pipe Lake bus went to pick them up every day, but in the fall of the year many of them skipped school. They had gone to pick wild rice. I don’t know where, but it seemed like a logical reason. While I like rice, it was years before I got my first taste of wild rice.
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Leave it to someone to come up with a new scammer idea. I got a call the other day telling me there were funds available if I was in debt. I generally play the deaf ear and wonder what this is all about and how could they help me get into debt. Well, they hung up. Generally it is how to lower my interest rate and then I explained that I don’t have an interest rate, but I could use the money. They hung up again.
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The South Jetty newspaper, published in Port Aransas, Texas, for the week of Aug. 20, published kind of an anniversary issue for the hurricane that hit there Aug. 25, 2017. Winds of 138 miles an hour and a sea surge of six to seven feet caused a considerable amount of damage. They ran a picture of the Sandcastle Condo where we stayed the last two years in a fifth floor efficiency unit which was shown completely covered with scaffolding and said repairs would hope to be completed in 2021. Channel View, where we stayed a few years before that, was reported to be still under repair and Island Retreat, where we lived a number of years when we first went down there, is completely redone and renting out units.
Cline’s Landing, where Bob and Jackie stayed the years they came down, is still under reconstruction and the management declined to comment on when it would be done.
Considering the stories in the paper that came this week telling about all the new construction and numbers of building permits most people aren’t concerned when the next one will come. I suppose the fact that the last one was in 1970, they think they probably won’t be around.
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Last week I ran out of room when I got to the part about the book by Mary Trump and her family. I described the family as being dysfunctional. It appears the only money the family had was made by the father of all the Trump boys. The oldest son, Fred Jr., was being groomed by his father to take over the family business. Which was being the owner of a bunch of apartment houses in New York. It involved collecting the rent and watching it grow. Not a bad game while it lasted.
Fred Jr. had other ideas. He loved to fly and got a job flying for some of the major airlines. But his father rode him so much that he finally gave in and came back to work.
Meanwhile, Donald came along and took over the job Fred Jr. had and discovered the endless pot of cash. He figured out how to get it and started in the casino business. Which seemed pretty good so if one casino is good, two would be better and three would be better yet.
The problem was that the casinos were in competition with themselves and suddenly they were gone. Donald kept spending money to a point that the banks put him on an allowance He was limited to $450,000 a month. That’s four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. Not bad for a young kid like Donald.
One of the ads against Joe Biden is that he will raise taxes. I would hope so as we have seen the national debt grow by over three trillion dollars this year. Worse than that is that he wants to cut out payroll taxes. It wouldn’t affect me as I don’t pay any taxes anymore, so you can’t cut that, but it could, as many people are saying, eliminate Social Security. I guess my only hope would be for my kids, grandchildren and great grandchildren to step in and take care of me.
It is just like running a business. If you take $10 to make a widget, and sell it for $15 you are making a profit. On the other hand, if you only charge $8 you will soon be out of business. Running a government operation is no different then running a business. That’s why most government agencies have to stay within a budget. Apparently the federal government has never learned this.
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That’s it for now. Hope you had a grand Labor Day weekend. Did you hear about the man who got hit in the head by a can of beverage? Thankfully it was a soft drink.
